Forecasts are still being fine-tuned, but it appears likely that areas of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington will receive huge amounts of precipitation over the next seven days, with portions of Northern California getting more than 10 inches.
At least four waves of atmospheric rivers are barreling across the Pacific targeting the West Coast. The animated GIF below illustrates the progression of these “rivers.”
Predictions are subject to change, but the first band, beginning Thursday morning, will have the heaviest impacts in WA, OR, and northwest CA.
Sunday morning will bring another, centered in Central California.
The third wave will start to come through Tuesday, with the heaviest precipitation expected in Northern CA and OR.
The forecast could change over the next seven days, but the prediction is that another wave will primarily impact OR and WA on Thursday, Oct. 28.
With it already being the second half of October, it is likely that these atmospheric rivers will bring an end to the wildland fire season in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. Most of Southern California south of Santa Barbara is expected to receive less than a half inch of precipitation, so if the rest of of the year there is warm, dry, and windy the area could still see more wildfire activity.
The three-month temperature and precipitation outlook issued today predicts November through January conditions in SoCal that will be warmer and drier than average. But if significant precipitation occurs in the next seven days, it would require some serious Santa Ana wind events to dry the soils and vegetation enough to enable large fires to occur.
Three-month temperature and precipitation outlook issued October 21, 2021.
One of the provisions in that legislation, the creation of a “Federal Wildland Firefighter Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease Database”, is interesting. About three years ago the Firefighter Cancer Registry Act of 2018 which passed July 7, 2018, required that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), an agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), establish a Firefighter Cancer Registry. The goal was to better understand the link between workplace exposures and cancer among firefighters. NIOSH has been piddling around with this for four years, led by Kenny Fent, accomplishing very little.
Kudos to the legislators who will attempt to get it done another way, after apparently giving up on the NIOSH Firefighter Cancer Registry.
The bill would increase their take home pay by raising firefighters’ salaries and would provide other benefits:
Raise federal wildland firefighter pay to at least $20 an hour, and add “portal-to-portal” compensation;
Create a federal wildland firefighter classification series, so wildland firefighters are appropriately classified for the dangerous work they are doing;
Provide health care and mental health services to temporary and permanent wildland firefighters, including:
creating a national “Federal Wildland Firefighter Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease Database” to track chronic disease caused by on the job environmental exposure throughout the lives of current and past wildland firefighters, and
launching a mental health awareness campaign, a mental health education and training program and an extensive peer to peer mental health support network for wildland firefighters and immediate family.
Ensure all federal wildland firefighters earn retirement benefits for temporary seasonal employment, retroactively applying to the last 10 years of service (this has been corrected, and applies to service since 1989;
Provide 1 week of mental health leave for wildland firefighters;
Provide housing stipends for all firefighters on duty more than 50 miles from their primary residence; and
Provide tuition assistance for all permanent federal employees in the wildland firefighter classification.
The bill would affect the approximately 15,000 firefighters that work for the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Forest Service. Their salaries are far below that found in some county, state, and municipal fire departments which has resulted in an exodus of trained and experienced fire personnel to other organizations, and makes recruitment of their replacements difficult.
Currently, wildland firefighters are primarily classified as “forestry technicians,” paid an hourly wage of $13.45 at the starting GS-3 level, and are often can’t afford the costs of housing while on the job. According to recent studies, firefighters nationwide commit suicide 30 times as often as the general public and have a 30% increased risk for cardiovascular diseases, and 43% increase for lung cancer.
The proposed legislation was announced during a virtual press conference Tuesday. Speakers in support included Rep. Joe Neguse (CO) and co-sponsor Rep. Salud Carbajal (CA). Other co-sponsors include Rep. Katie Porter (CA) and Rep. Liz Cheney (WY). Mr. Neguse is Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Wildfire Caucus.
The bill is named after Tim Hart, a smokejumper who died May 24, 2021 after a hard landing while parachuting into the Eicks Fire in New Mexico. Mr. Hart’s widow, Michelle Hart, was one of the speakers at the virtual press conference, expressing her support of the legislation.
“Tim would be humbled and honored to have this legislation be a part of his legacy,” she said. “These issues were deeply important and personal to him. Wildland firefighters deserve to be recognized and compensated for the grueling conditions in which they work and for putting their lives on the line every day. This legislation is a major step forward in achieving that goal.”
The legislation has not yet been introduced, and after that step it has to make it through several committees before it can be voted on in the full House of Representatives. One of those committees, the National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands subcommittee, is chaired by Mr. Neguse who said he will arrange for a hearing on the bill.
Mr. Neguse said he was reasonably certain that a companion Senate bill will be introduced in the coming weeks.
The bill is endorsed by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, International Association of Firefighters, U.S. Hotshots Association, National Smokejumper Association, Wildland Firefighter Foundation, Eric Marsh Foundation, National Federation of Federal Employees, and Team Rubicon.
The Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, one of the organizations that provided input as the legislation was being formulated, issued a statement on the legislation:
“We urge all members of congress to support Tim’s Act, if you represent a district impacted by wildfire or any type of natural disaster, please understand how these needed fixes impact the well-being of the men and women responding to those incidents.” said Luke Mayfield, GWF Vice President, adding that, “simultaneously Grassroots Wildland Firefighters will work to keep firefighters and their families briefed on how the bill would impact their lives.”
Yesterday the Bureau of Land Management published a slickly-produced three-minute video that is an introduction to the wildland fire management activities of the agency.
The BLM’s description of the video:
“The BLM, a leader in wildland fire management, conducts a broad range of actions to protect the public, natural landscapes, wildlife habitat, recreational areas, and other values and resources. The agency’s national fire and aviation program, BLM Fire, which focuses on public safety as its top priority, consists of fire suppression, preparedness, predictive services, vegetative fuels management, community assistance and protection, and fire prevention through education. To meet its wildland fire-related challenges, the BLM fields highly trained professional firefighters and managers who are committed to managing fire in the most effective and efficient manner.”
Upper-air profiles detected with sodar can measure upper-air winds before they begin at the surface
Sodar system used in the upper-air profiler pilot test. Image courtesy of Sonoma Technology.
A team of researchers with Pyregence have developed a system for predicting when strong upper-air winds will descend to the surface 8 to 10 hours in advance. Strong wind is the environmental factor that is virtually always present during catastrophic wildfire events that destroy hundreds of structures and put thousands of residents at great risk. Fuel conditions, humidity, and topography are also important factors, but few fires become fire storms without strong winds. Predicting the onset of a wind event can affect the deployment of firefighters, the tactics they employ on existing fires, and allow better decisions about preemptive power shutoffs, community warnings, and evacuations.
A device called sodar blasts a very loud 91-decibel pulsing beep into the sky which is then scattered by atmospheric turbulence back to the sodar, allowing profile calculations of wind speed, direction, and height.
Below is an excerpt from an article at Pyregence.org:
Profilers offer distinct advantages over other data collection methods. Most upper-atmosphere weather data is collected using radiosondes, instruments carried aloft, generally by balloon, two times a day. Profilers, by contrast, gather data two or three times every hour, and they also collect more detailed information throughout the lowest levels of the atmosphere—factors that allow for more accurate forecasts.
In 2003, for example, a profiler in New Mexico detected intensifying upper-air winds that had been missed by nearby radiosonde observations. The profiler helped forecasters accurately predict a midnight wind surge, giving fire crews the information they needed to rapidly contain the spread of the fire.
“Sodars have the ability to provide information that you can’t get from other instruments, and that are not available in the surface meteorological network,” says Kenneth Craig, a Senior Atmospheric Scientist and Meteorologist with Sonoma Technology, an environmental consulting firm that conducted the study for Pyregence.
DETECTING DESCENDING WINDS
For the Pyregence pilot test, the sodar system collected data from July 25 through October 26, 2020 [north of Santa Rosa in Northern California.]
Although a number of high-wind events occurred at the site during the pilot study period, a Diablo event that developed in late September proved particularly revealing.
Between 3 and 4 p.m. on September 25, strong winds developed 300–600 meters above ground level. Then, just after 1 a.m. that night, surface wind gusts of about 35 mph were recorded. The next day saw a similar pattern: strong winds developed aloft in the mid-afternoon and then gradually descended to the surface around midnight.
Both days, that is, saw high winds develop first in the upper atmosphere and then, about 8–10 hours later, descend to the surface. That time gap offers a window of opportunity to improve wildfire preparedness, especially during active fire situations.
[…]
BETTER DATA MEANS IMPROVED FIRE FORECASTS
The Extreme Weather Team concluded that a statewide network of strategically placed upper-air profilers could improve short-term forecasts of surface winds and help scientists who model fire behavior better understand the complex interactions of the atmosphere and wildfire.
How many sodars are needed? Although the scientists who led the study cautioned that they had not conducted a detailed analysis of this issue, they indicated that a relatively small number—perhaps in the range of 10–15 sodars carefully positioned across California—could dramatically improve the ability to predict strong winds.
“You don’t have to blanket every geographic area with instruments—there’s always a balance between the cost and the benefit,” Craig says. “But a handful of strategically placed sodars would fill gaps in our observing network and provide valuable information to support situational awareness and forecasting efforts.”
Can we prevent the annual loss of 10 percent of the giant sequoias
Firefighter on the Windy Fire applies water on a burning giant sequoia tree. Photo uploaded to InciWeb Oct. 11, 2021.
In 2020, 10 to 14 percent of all giant sequoias across the tree’s natural range in the Sierra Nevada that were at least four feet diameter were killed in the Castle Fire when a substantial proportion of all sequoia groves touched by the fire burned with unprecedented severity.
There are two fires currently burning which are destroying more of these iconic beasts of trees, the KNP Complex just north of the Castle Fire, and the Windy Fire which has spread into the south side of the Castle Fire. These three fires were primarily in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and the Sequoia National Forest.
Three fires in two years that killed giant sequoia trees. The green areas represent groves of giant sequoias.
According to a very preliminary estimate by the KNP Complex incident management team which was later removed from Facebook, “hundreds” of the iconic trees may have been killed in one day, October 4, in the Redwood Mountain Grove, the largest giant sequoia grove on Earth.
Under normal conditions giant sequoia trees can live for more than 3,000 years, which is 38 times the life expectancy of a human in the United States. The multi-year drought and higher temperatures have led to extremely dry fuel moistures which is causing wildfires in California and other areas to burn with unusual intensity, making even some of the giant sequoias with bark up to a foot thick susceptible to wildfires burning under these conditions.
KNP Complex of fires. Giant sequoias in the Giant Forest, posted Sept. 19, 2021. InciWeb.
It will take a few years for the final death toll to be determined in the Castle Fire, but a report released June 25, 2021 estimating the mortality found that areas which burned with high intensity, which was 30 percent of the Castle Fire grove areas, killed many giant sequoias. Below are the mortality and survival numbers from the report for the Alder Creek Grove, which shows 97.3 percent mortality in high fire severity areas, and 55.1 percent in moderate severity locations.
The early data for the 2020 Castle Fire translates to an estimated loss of 7,500 to 10,600 large sequoias (those with trunk diameters of four feet or more).
It could be many months or up to a year before a complete inventory determines the additional giant sequoia mortality from the fires in 2021, the Windy Fire and KNP Complex.
On October 12 the US Forest Service reported that in the Windy Fire all but four mature giant sequoias were killed in one of the smaller groves, Starvation Creek, which according to earlier information had about 30 mature sequoias. Three other groves, the FS said, had less severe damage, and four still have not been evaluated and may not be until Spring or Summer of 2022. This information only applies to the Sequoia National Forest and Giant Sequoia National Monument, and does not include the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and the KNP Complex.
Probably millions of trees are killed every year in wildfires. Should we care that 10,000 or so extremely large ones were wiped out in 2020, with trunk diameters that exceed 20 feet, that can be more than 300 feet in height and live more than 3,000 years?
These big trees are a link with our past. They represent the fact that some living things can thrive for a very long time if no one comes along to totally screw things up.
What can be done?
Fix the climate? It won’t happen quickly. The reality is that even if all of the industrialized nations overnight adopted climate-friendly policies and practices, it could be decades before CO2 and other climate gasses would decrease to the point where the climate would begin to return to pre-1850 conditions.
Harden the giant sequoia groves? Reducing the ground and ladder fuels beneath the huge trees can make them more resistant to fire. The Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks have been treating many of the groves with prescribed fire since the 1960s. The Sequoia National Forest also has an active prescribed fire program. But the federal agencies have not had the funding and personnel to conduct thinning and prescribed fire projects in all of the groves. And California air quality regulations and residents who complain about smoke from prescribed fires restrict the windows for when the burns can take place.
Rethink the way limited firefighting resources are allocated to going fires? In a September 23, 2021 public briefing, one of the Operations Section Chiefs on these fires explained that he did not have enough hand crews and other resources to be able to work on all of the high priority areas on his fire at the same time, and was forced to shift them around based on fire activity. It sounded like Whack-A-Mole. This was due at least in part to the numerous ongoing fires, which were competing for the same resources. Other fires had similar shortages and unfilled resource orders.
We asked Rebecca Paterson, a Public Affairs Specialist for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, if all of the resource requests or orders placed by the incident management team had been filled would there have been less giant sequoia mortality?
“It would be impossible for us to determine what could have been and we do not want to speculate,” Ms. Paterson replied.
The role of Multi-Agency Coordinating Groups in allocating scarce firefighting resources
We also asked Ms Paterson, “Beyond placing resource requests and orders, was anything else done in an attempt to procure additional resources? Such as conversations by high-ranking NPS and USFS personnel with regional and national level entities or the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group (NMAC)?”
Ms. Paterson: “The NPS representative to the National Multiagency Coordinating Group was aware of the competing resource needs across multiple geographic areas during Preparedness Level 4 and had daily contact with the Southern California Geographic Area as their NMAC liaison. NMAC makes resource allocations to geographic areas not specific incidents. The geographic areas then assign resources to incidents. We do not know what conversations may have occurred within the United States Forest Service.”
Protect communities and community infrastructure, other property and improvements, and natural and cultural resources.
The 2021 Multi-Agency Coordination System Procedure Guide for FIRESCOPE California uses a point system for establishing priorities for resource allocation among incidents. The maximum score is 60 for each fire. Only up to 5 points can be attributed to “Natural Resources (Threatened and Endangered Species Habitat, Watershed, Forest Health, Soils, Air Shed, etc.).” Up to 15 points can be assigned to structures and infrastructure.
It is probably safe to assume that when multiple large fires are burning most of the priorities for allocating scarce resources are decided by individuals with a history of on the ground firefighting. They may or may not have a bias toward assigning fire personnel to protect buildings, rather than fires where 3,000-year old trees 300 feet tall and 20 feet in diameter are being destroyed.
Today, the last giant sequoias on Earth live on land the size of Cleveland (48,000 acres) in about 73 groves scattered along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. The northernmost grow in Placer County in Tahoe National Forest, and the southernmost groves are in Giant Sequoia National Monument. They need a great amount of water and depend on the Sierra snowpack that accumulates over the winter months and soaks into the ground when it melts. Years of drought, declining snowpack, and increasingly intense wildfires are putting the species at greater risk.
If these massive plants were able to already live for thousands of years, it is irresponsible to not ramp up our efforts to protect them when human-caused climate change is suddenly leading to the destruction of large segments of their populations, 10 to 14 percent last year alone.
As we get deeper into the bowels of climate change it is going to be increasingly difficult to maintain the status of all living things on the planet, except for cockroaches, Keith Richards, and Clint Eastwood.
The Bottom Line
Since only approximately 100,000 of these mammoth trees are left that are larger than four feet in diameter, government employees allocating firefighting resources need to strongly consider their value to the nation and the world, and that some of them have been living for thousands of years. It is disheartening to see hundreds of them destroyed in a matter of hours, especially if due in part to sending resources, instead, to in some cases protect structures that have not been hardened to FireSafe standards or constructed under reasonable county and city building codes.
We need to continue to manage the fuels beneath these big trees, and redouble the prescribed fire programs around them that began in the 1960s. Congress and the President need to increase the fuel management funding for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Sequoia National Forest, and Giant Sequoia National Monument to make this possible.
Flames spread around a large tree on the Windy Fire. Mike McMillan, BIA. Uploaded to InciWeb Sept. 22, 2021.
